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The free app that frees up my brain cells for important things

This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of LastPass. All opinions are 100% mine.

In an average day, I use LastPass approximately 1,653 times (give or take a few!).

I’ve been using this handy program for more than seven years (a search of the archives will show that I’ve written about it a few times already!), and while I stuck to the free version for many years, I now happily pay my premium membership fee of $12 a year.

Why? Because LastPass makes it easy to keep my online accounts secure without trying to remember hundreds of individual passwords.

LastPass lets me:

1. Keep track of the 120+ passwords I use on a regular basiswithout resorting to using Password123 across the web just so I can remember them.

2. Access my saved passwords from anywhere—any computer, any device, any phone—at any time. I have the app loaded to all of my devices, but you can also visit LastPass.com to access your vault at any time.

3. Save credit card information in a secure notes so that I don’t have to hunt down my wallet when I need it. I’ve added an extra password to these notes so that even when I’m logged in, I have to reenter my password to get the card numbers, which prevents someone from accessing them from my computer. You can save a wide variety of secure notes—from bank account and policy numbers to gift lists and wifi passwords—so that all of your important info is in one place.

4. Fill out forms automatically with all of my info rather than typing my info manually each time. This isn’t why I use LastPass, but I’ll take time savings wherever I can find them!

5. Automatically log in to my favorite sites as soon as they load! Enough said.

6. Designate a person I trust to have emergency access to my vault and all of my important accounts if something happens to me…or if I change my password in the middle of the night and forget it (see my I-can-laugh-now story below).

7. Share passwords with other people, either individually or by folder. This is perfect for giving someone access to a single account or sharing a collection of passwords with an assistant, family member, etc.

8. Generate and save secure passwords with the push of a button since there are limits to the number of passwords I can come up with and remember. And you can even make sure it follows the password rules of even the pickiest site! (Have you ever noticed that it’s the sites where you need the least security that have the pickiest rules? What’s up with that?!)

9. Manage multiple accounts for a single site. As an entrepreneur and blogger with multiple sites, this is especially helpful since I have multiple Gmail accounts, Twiiter profiles, Paypal accounts, etc.

10. Rest easy knowing that the data I’ve saved is secure through local-only encryption and the strongest technology available.

A few years ago I was up in the middle of the night nursing Jackson. Because I was exhausted, I was on my phone trying to stay awake so I could put him back to bed afterward. (This was before I accepted that we were going to just be cosleepers for this stage of life!)

For some reason or another, I got the bright idea that it was time to change my LastPass vault password. Doing that isn’t a bad idea, of course, especially since I’d started using that password in other places as well, and I want to be sure my vault always remains secure.

But what is a bad idea is changing your password in the middle of the night when you’re desperately sleep deprived.

I woke up the next morning and simply couldn’t remember my new password. I thought it might have something to do with “cantaloupe”, but no matter how many variations or misspellings I tried, I couldn’t get in.

Unfortunately, LastPass is serious about security, and if you don’t have emergency access set up and you lose your password, well, you’re kind of out of luck. After spending a few days hoping against hope that I would finally remember the password, I resigned myself to the fact that I would need to create a new account.

My first step? Setting up an emergency contact so it doesn’t happen again!